Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are optical displays used in devices such as laptop computers, hand-held calculators, digital watches and televisions. Some LCDs include a light source that is located to the side of the display, with a light guide positioned to guide the light from the light source to the back of the LCD panel. Other LCDs, for example some LCD monitors and LCD televisions (LCD-TVs) are directly illuminated using a number of light sources positioned behind the LCD panel. This arrangement is increasingly common with larger displays, because the light power requirements, to achieve a certain level of display brightness, increase with the square of the display size, whereas the available real estate for locating light sources along the side of the display only increases linearly with display size. In addition, some LCD applications, such as LCD-TVs, require that the display be bright enough to be viewed from a greater distance than other applications, and the viewing angle requirements for LCD-TVs are generally different from those for LCD monitors and hand-held devices.
Some LCD monitors and most LCD-TVs are commonly illuminated from behind by a number of cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs). These light sources are linear and stretch across the full width of the display, with the result that the back of the display is illuminated by a series of bright stripes separated by darker regions. Such an illumination profile is not desirable, and so a diffuser plate is used to smooth the illumination profile at the back of the LCD device.
Currently, LCD-TV diffuser plates employ a polymeric matrix of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) with a variety of dispersed phases that include glass, polystyrene beads, and CaCO3 particles, or blends thereof. These plates often deform or warp after exposure to the elevated temperatures of the lamps. In addition, some diffusion plates are provided with a diffusion characteristic that varies across its width, in an attempt to make the illumination profile at the back of the LCD panel more uniform. Such non-uniform diffusers are sometimes referred to as printed pattern diffusers. They are expensive to manufacture, since the diffusing pattern must be registered to the illumination source. In addition, the diffusion plates require customized extrusion compounding to distribute the diffusing particles uniformly throughout the polymer matrix, which further increases costs.